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AN ORATION 



DELIVERED BY 



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GEN'L FRANCIS A^ WALKER, 



SDlMers'JItuttiiinent |)eMcoti0n 



IN NORTH BROOKFIELD, JAN. 19, 1870. 



ALSO THE ADDRESSES OF 



ffis Excellency Wm. Claflin, Gen. Chas. Peyens 



AND OTHERS, WITH A 



BRIEF ACCOUNT OF THE CELEBRATION. 



Worcester : 

GODDARD & NYE, PRINTERS, 

270 Main Street, corner of Front. 

187 0. 



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Amer. Ant. Soo. 
25 JJ '^^"* 



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TO THE 

"Yl^IDOWS, Pl\PHANS, AND OTHEF\ ]R.ELATIVES 
OF THE DECEASED, 

Whose Patriotism and Sacrifices must ever be the Thenie of 
Orators and Statesmen, 

TJiis Pamphlet is Affectionately Inscribed^ 

Bv THE Committee. 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



, Worcester, Jan. 22, 1870. 
Gen'l Francis A. Walker: 
Dear Sir: 

Pursuant to a vote passed at the Soldiers" 
Monmnent Dedication, in North Brookfield, on the 19th instant, the 
undersigned solicit a copy of the oration delivered by yoii at that 
time, for publication, and in this connection jjlease accept our hearty 
thanks for the great service rendered upon that interesting occasion — 
service made more than gratuitous by the remembrance of a soldier's 
widow and children by a noble contribution. 



Yours, respectfully. 



E. J. RUSSELL, 

T. M. DUNCAN, > „ 

WM. H. MONTAGUE, ' C''"^"^'"^^- 

CHAKLES ADAMS 



JE, ( 
, Jb. ) 



Washington, D. C, Feb. 1, 1870. 
Gentlemen : 

I am favored with your letter of the 22d ult., requesting a copy 
of the oration delivered at the Dedication of the Soldiers' Monument 
at North Brookfield. 

I comply with the request in the sj^irit in which it was made, 
the same si)ii"it, I am sure, in which the address was ]3repared and 
deUvered, namely, the earnest desire to do all honor to the patriotic 
dead of our town. 

Veiy truly yours, 

FKANCIS A. WALKEK. 
Capt. E. J. RUSSELL, 
T. M. DUNCAN, EsQ. 



"W. H. MONTAGUE, EsQ. '' Committee. 

Hon. CHARLES ADAMS, jE. 



• ORATION. 



My Friends: 

This is peculiarly the Soldiers' Day. Perhaps 
we are never less fitted to sympathize Avith the individual 
soldier than wHen indulging the thoughts and feelings proper to 
the anniversary celehration of some great battle, as when, last 
summer, thousands were assembled at Gettysburg to commem- 
orate the deeds of that historic field. The dedication of a 
monument to a distinguished commander, calls up a single 
majestic figure in which concentres all the glory and renoAvn 
of a score of battles — from which radiates victory almost as a 
personal emanation. But an occasion like this which has called 
us together to-day, brings up the individual soldier in all the 
variety of his martial experience, march, bivouac, hospital, not 
less than fougliten field, in all the sacredness, and it may be the 
sorrow, of his domestic relations. This shaft evokes no images 
of battle as a grand panorama of charging lines and gleaming 
squadrons, over which presides some heroic spirit, grand and 
terrible, the genius of desolation, but also of victory. These 
village commemorations of the fallen brave call up no such 
pictures of grandeur or terror. They minister nothing to fame, 
nothing to the love of gloiy, nothing to the passion of war. 

And I cannot but think it fortunate that no name distin- 
guished in arms intrudes upon us here, like a great man at some 
homely festival, bringing constraint upon the cordial exchanges 
of neighborly feeling, exacting an unequal share of the atten- 
tion of the company, and tlirowing humble merit into the 

2 



6 

shade. Among the names upon tliis legend, there are no such 
differences of rank or reputation as put the least favored at 
disadvantage. Of all those here commemorated, not one but 
had served as a private soldier; not one rose to the rank of a 
commissioned officer. There is something in this which is most 
congenial to our purpose of paying respect to each and all of 
the sons of North Brookfield who have flillen in the defense of 
their country. P\)r one I cannot but be glad that the chance 
of birth has given to this little town no military officer of 
distinction to take the lion's share of our remembrance and 
admiration ; no colonel or general to whom belongs pages of 
eulogy, while the humble soldier who exhibited equal courage, 
patriotism and self-denial finds only a few lines of praise, perhaps 
but the simjjle mention of his name. It is that courage, 
patriotism and self-denial, in which the general went not a step 
before the private soldier, which we here commemorate. The 
accident of military genius, the greater accident of success in 
war, should be nothing to us on an occasion like this. For our 
purpose of honoring these men we care not whether they fell 
in victory or defeat. It makes no difference with their claim 
on us, or with our affection and gratitude to them. Looking at 
the sacrifice which each one of them made, from the standpoint 
of the commander or the historian, and considering mei'ely the 
importance of his single life to a great army, or the contribution 
made in his death to the final result of the struggle, it seems 
small — small indeed as the two mites which make a fiirthing. 
Yet looking at the sacrifice from our standpoint to-day, that of 
patriotic gratitude and neighborly affection, that contribution 
was as rich and complete as when a Kearney, a Lyon, or a 
Sedgewick, whose single presence in a fight was worth a 
thousand men, cast in of his abundance, laying his precious 
life freely on the altar of .his country's liberties. 

If there is one thing which we instinctively desire when we 
have been called to make some great and painful sacrifice, it is 
to see the fruit of our sacrifice. It makes sorrow and loss twice 



as hard to hear, to know that they are in vain ; to know that 
what we vahied most and loved best have been thrown utterly 
away. Those dreadful days are still too deeply impressed on 
your memories that you should need to be reminded how, for 
two years, every quick succeeding shock of war was rendered 
more distressing and tci-rible by the consciousness that so much 
blood and treasure were being wasted through the systematic 
misdirection of effort, and by the ignorance and incompetence 
of our commanders. 

So frequent and so distressing became these disasters that the 
sentiment to which allusion has been made did not merely add 
to the poignancy of private grief. It became a great element 
in the problem of the war; it discouraged enlistments; it 
terribly weakened the forces in the field. Young men declined 
to enter the army because there was no assurance that they 
would not be led to slaughter by drunken or worthless officers. 
It was, perhaps, inevitable ; but it was none the less wrong. 
The duty of a man to serve and save his country does not 
depend on any such conditions. No citizen has a right to make 
terms for his own life, when the life of the nation is in peril. If 
such a plea were to be accepted, it would become the ample 
excuse for every delinquency, and no man would find the time 
when he was so fully satisfied of the competency of his 
country's generals, and the correctness of the military or 
political principles on which the war was to be waged, quite to 
see his way clear to enlist. "What would have become of us 
and the great cause of human liberty and republican govern- 
ment had not there been found men who did not count the risk 
or criticise their orders ; but bufieted the dark, cold waves of 
defeat and disaster without hope for themselves, and sank 
beneath them without one complaining cry ? 

Disasters will occur in war. " The general that has never 
made a mistake has fought few battles," said Washington. But 
without any mistakes made, defeat may come to the best 
appointed and best commanded anny, by the mysterious 



chances of battle, or through the operation of general but 
remote and inappreciable causes. Those who will fight only on 
the winning side and under the victorious commander, must 
enlist after the war and not at its beginning. Nay, it often 
becomes a necessity of national existence that a people shall 
enter upon a protracted contest without veteran troops and 
accomjilished leaders; to trust to bloody and costly experi- 
ments, a long succession, it may be, of defeats and disasters, 
to train the troops and the commanders who shall achieve 
the final victory. It is very hard, of course, but the only 
alternative is national dishonor or dissolution, and between 
tlie two no true man will hesitate ; and no one is excused on 
account of his very natural and proper dislike to become one 
of the A'ictims of such an experiment. It is pleasanter, vastly, 
to march to victory imder a skilled and resolute general, with 
high hopes and the courage that is inspired of confidence in a 
commander. But it is even more a duty, sometimes, to go with- 
out shrinking into what you know to be not a battle but a 
butchery. The responsibility of the event rests with others. 
Your way is plain. To refuse to discharge your duty because 
of the certain destruction Avhich attends it, would be to sacrifice 
interests far more precious than life ; and jjrobably in the end 
to sacrifice ten lives for one that might be saved by such an 
abandonment of obligation and honor. 

In our case, tliis hardship Avas aggravated and prolonged 
almost beyond endurance by having to submit to these harroAv- 
ing experiences, not for the instruction of commanders well 
selected and giving a reasonable promise of profiting by their 
rebuflfs and defeats ; but for the sake of exhibiting successively 
the hopeless incompetence of a half-score of military j)retenders, 
whom, if instinct were as strong in men as it is in horses and 
dogs, we should have knoAvn at sight to be imposters. 

What sad, wretched days those were ! What a trial of our 
faith and constancy ! What a burden of fear and sorrow ! 
Painful enough for the soldier in the field ; more painful still 



9 

for fathers aiul mothers and -wives at lionie. But, I say again, 
this made no difference with the question of duty. The more 
imfortunate the country in its commanders, the more need to 
have brave and devoted soldiers. Do you plead that this is a hard 
saying — who shall bear it? I answer, your soldit'rs boi'c it, tlie 
much-enduring men who, through years weary marching and 
bloody fighting, hardly ever saw one day of triumph ; who, 
beaten again and again, without any faidt of theirs, insulted and 
betrayed on the right hand and on the left, still stood by their 
colors ; following them, victorious or beaten, yes, followed them 
to such an end as these comrades and friends of ours whom we 
bury anew to-day. 

But T will not add to the distress of mourning friends by 
dwelling upon so painful a theme. Strangely enough, and 
fortunately, in that most inexcusable of all the massacres into 
which the Union troops were led by incompetent and beAvild- 
ered generals — the melancholy and mysterious affair at Ball's 
Bluif — not one soldier from North Brookfield lost his life. In 
that terrible initiation, the regiment with which at the time all 
our hopes and interests were connected, lost blood almost to 
fainting ; its bravest officers, its best men, fell in that dark and 
bloody strife ; and the loth regiment and our comjjany F 
returned to their camp at Poolesville, only the shadoAV of Avhat 
they were when they marched out from among us, accom])anied 
by our acclamations and our jirayers; yet not one of our own 
boys was found among the victims. It cannot help seeming 
strange to look upon that tablet, and reflect that in all the long 
list of the fallen there should not be a single representative of 
the battle which, at the time, so powerfully moved us ; which 
formed the theme of so much comment, and cast such a gloom 
over this community during the whole of that long and Aveari- 
some winter. How little we then appreciated the real ]iropor- 
tions of the struggle on Avhich we had entered ! "Would our 
courage and patriotism have held good, had it then been told us 
that battle alter battle should follow in fierce succession, and 



10 

that the tidings of sons fallen in fight should on ten diiferent 
occasions thereafter he borne to the homes of North Broolcfield ? 

Generally speaking, however, it may be said that our soldiers 
were fortunate, since they must die, in the time and manner 
of their death. More than our fair share, when we consider 
how many were the misconceptions and miscarriages.of the war, 
fell under circumstances that caused us to feel tliat their death 
was not in vain — fell on days when the forces of treason and 
slavery were broken and driven by the patriotic valor of a loyal 
and liberty-loving army. 

It is a surprising fact that among the thirty-one soldiers from 
this town, w ho fell the victims of battle and disease, are found 
the representatives of nineteen different regiments, belonging to 
as many as seven States. IIow strangely this indifference, 
manifested in the later years of the war, as to the circumstances 
of service, contrasts with the sentiment which animated the North 
Brookfield soldiers of 1861, when we united with two neighboring 
towns to form Company F of the 15th regiment ! Why, in those 
days, hardly one of our number would have thought that he 
could bring his mind to enlist in a strange regiment, or even in 
another company from that to which his schoolmates and his 
townsmen belonged. But Ave well knoAV, how soon the feeling 
wore off under the teaching of actual service ; and that soldiers 
became almost strangely indifferent to the accidents of circum- 
stance and surroundings, having learned that war is war anywhere 
and anyhow ; that in its tremendous experience the j^etty fact of 
previous acquaintance goes for very little ; that in the hardships 
and dangers of campaign, men lay the foundations of far deeper 
and more intimate friendships than are possible in this peaceful 
and self-indulgent life of ours. 

But the number which has been mentioned as the number to 
which our dead soldiers belonged, does not express the full 
measure of that scattering which sent our sons and brothers to 
fight on almost every field where liberty and union were battled 
for. In addition to these, I find that this town was represented in 



11 

eighteen other regiments and batteries of the loyal army, making 
a total of thirty-seven organizations borne u])on the military roll 
of North Brookfield. Sepai'ated thus widely, it is not strange 
that of the comparatively small number of fourteen Avho died of 
Avounds received at the hands of the enemy, not less than nine 
important battles of the Avar are given as the place of death, 
Avhile still another perished in the advance guard of Sherman's 
army in his famous march to the sea. In only tAvo actions did 
North Brookfield have to mourn more than a single loss. At 
Cold Hai-bor fell Nathan S. Dickinson ; at Piedmont, George 
S. Prouty ; at Petersburg, on the 3(tth of September, Lyman H. 
Gilbert; at the first Fredericksburg, David 8. Moulton ; at 
Cedar Creek, John Ileniy Jenks ; at Winchester, James P. 
Coolidge ; and at Poole's Station, by treacherous and coAvardly 
assassination, William Clark. But at Sj^ottsylvania Ave lost both 
George L. Sherman and Lyman D. WinsloAV ; Avhile in the 
dark Avoods that fringe the banks of Antietam Creek, fell in one 
bloody and terrible half-hour, Henry R. Bliss, Joseph C. Fretts 
and Charles Perry. 

Our experience as a toAvn fully bears out the observation that, 
despite all the ])ictured horrors of battle, moi-e perish in Avar by 
the stroke of disease than hj sAvord or bullet. Sixteen of these 
nien died, not in the flush of health and courage, not in the 
tumult of the onset, amid the cheers of chai-ging lines, but by 
painful and lingering disease, in distant hospitals ; some, alas ! 
in the hands of cruel and vindictive enemies. Quite otherAvise 
than as Ave might have supposed, these soldiers made their beds 
of death closer together than the fourteen Avho fell in battle. 
Peter Devlin, indeed, died at Nashville, John A. Iluges at 
Philadelphia, Lyman Tucker at Alexandria, iVlonzo E. Pellet at 
Vicksburg, Thomas (4rilhn in the confederate j^i'ison at Salis- 
bury, and Charles Ashby returned to die among his friends in 
his OA^•n home. But of the remainder, four died at NcAvbern, 
that charnel house of brave men ; tAvo more on the same ship in 
the same brief voyage ; Avhile not less than four from the toAA'u 



12 

perisherl, the victims of rebel brutality, in the prison pens of 
Andersonville. 

Perhaps no part of our loss is harder to get over than this 
last. If anything could justify sentiments of undying hatred 
toward all who participated in the slaveholders' rebellion, it was 
the treatment of our defenceless prisoners. Our falteiing human 
thought can conceive but one i-eason why a God of mercy 
should have ])crmitted such hellish cruelties ; that slavery, about 
to perish from the earth, condemned by the conscience of the 
race, driven by the steady advance of human enlightenment to 
a last desperate contest for existence, and already even in its 
death-struggle, should raise its own hideous monument of terror 
and shame, and carve thereon its own epitaph of everlasting 
infamy. Andersonville, with its 14,000 graves of martyred men, 
dying by a death whose tortures tongue cannot utter nor 
thought conceive, deliberately and malignantly exposed and 
starved until reason or life gave way ; Andersonville, where, as 
a confederate commission officially reported, out of 30,000 
prisoners, 8,008 died in the two months of July and August, 
1864; Andersonville, where only death was merciful, and an 
unnamed and unmarked grave was the best hope of the suffering 
patriot ; Andersonville will ever remain, while history utters its 
solemn voice, or the dim, receding echoes of tradition are heard 
along the ages, the true and just and perfect portraiture of 
human slavery. It was slavery that crowded our brothers and 
our sons into those foul prison pens ; it was slaveiy that denied 
them every comfort and decency of life ; it was slavery that 
drew that devilish dead line around that camp of horrors ; it was 
slavery that dealt out the vile and scant provision which could 
not sustain life, but only prolong agony ; slavery built and 
filled and guarded those dreadful stockades ; slavery, in its last 
desperate struggle, abandoning all concessions to public opinion, 
throwing off all disguises, fighting in its own peculiar sjiirit, and 
doing its own proper work ui)on the dear bodies of our brothers 
and our sons. The slavery that did these deeds of hell, was the 



13 

same slavery, nothing else and nothing worse, with Avhicli we 
compromised, and for which we found excuses ; of which we 
took southside views, and at whose dictation we surrendered, 
one by one, the chartered privileges of our freedom ! Cursed, 
forever accursed, be the thought and name of liuman slavery ! 
Shame, eternal shame, to every one who defends the monstrous 
wrong to man and insult to God ! 

Such and so many were the losses to Nortli Brookfield in the 
war of tlie rebellion. The contribution which we were called 
on to make was no greater than that of many of our neighboring 
towns, of thousands of villages all over the face of this stricken 
land. Nor do we Avish to claim any superior merit of courage 
or devotion for these our friends and brothers over the fallen 
brave of any other town or section. 'We are satisfied to praise 
our own, recognizing gladly and gratefully the worth and 
deserving of all who fought beneath the same flag with them or 
fell on the same fields of battle. We have the right to speak 
well of our own. These men we believe to have been good 
soldiers and true men, all of them. With a single exception 
hereafter to be mentioned, I do not know that any discredit rests 
upon the military record or personal character, in the field, of a 
single one of them. Speaking broadly but conscientiously, the 
men we commemorate, to-day, were brave, capable and devoted 
soldiers, well worthy of their place in the noblest army the world 
ever saw, and well worthy of lasting remembrance and honor 
among us. And it must not be forgotten that simply to be a 
good soldier, to maintain an unblemished record and to keep the 
respect and confidence of comrades and commanders, in all the 
trying scenes and circumstances of war, is to prove one's self 
possessed of a very high order of manhood. It is not like simply 
avoiding social censure at home, which a man may do who has 
nothing positive and strong about him — jDcrhaps is the more 
likely to do because he has nothing strong or positive about 
him. But merely to do one's duty with an army in the field 
requires the constant display of qualities, which, whenever 

3 



14 

shown in peaceful life, attract universal attention and excite the 
highest admiration. How many a man has by a single act of 
courage and devotion redeemed an otherwise questionable 
character and wasted life. 

But in war, especially such a war as ours, acts of heroism 
made up the almost daily life of the soldier. Probably not one 
of the audience not himself a soldier, ever suffered, on any 
occasion of his life, as our bi*ave boys, day and night, from 
month to month, in the terrible winter campaigns into which 
they were driven, in defiance of reason and nature, by the 
impatience of the country and the miserable interference of the 
politicians at Washington. Probably not one of you ever once 
knew wdiat it was to be as hungry as — I will not say those who 
pined and starved in southern prisons — but as the majority of 
our soldiers frequently were on the march when supplies were 
short. You have felt the heat almost unendurable at times, but 
what do you think of marching in file for twenty-five miles on 
such a day as the 14th of August, 1864, the sun never going in 
for a moment, the dust standing twenty feet high in a dense 
column that could be seen for miles, and men lying dead from 
exhaustion on both sides of the road ? As for giving any one 
who has not experienced it an idea of the physical agony of 
going for days together without sleep, save as it could be found 
lying in a dusty or a frozen road, while the broken down 
artillery horses stopped for a moment's rest, or snatched in the 
intervals of skirmish and battle, with shells plunging to right or 
left unheard or unheeded — I despair of it. 

Thus, putting aside the necessity of occasionally encountering 
the most appaling dangers, such and other frequent and almost 
unceasing discomforts are the lot of the soldier in the discharge 
of his duty. ISTor must it be thought that these hardships are 
necessary to every soldier, whether he would escape them or not, 
and that therefore they are borne as things inevitable are borne. 
It is always entirely possible for a soldier to shirk if he has tlie 
mind to do it. It is not necessary to recount the hundred 



15 

artifices and pretences by -which men contrive to get out of fight, 
off from picket, or into hospital, in order to show tliat the soldier 
Avlio does good duty, does it because he would rather encounter 
danger, fatigue and pain than be known to his comrades and his 
officers as a shirk. And because the hardsliij»s an<l trials of 
army service are such as they are, and are at the same time in a 
certain and in a high sense voluntary, it is true that for one 
sim])ly to have the record of a good soldier, simply to discharge 
the regular duties of camp and outpost, of march and battle, is 
to deserve high praise. The more showy qualities of soldiership, 
the chance of performing some brilliant exi)loit, or the accident 
of an especial military gift, added little, if anything, to the real 
claim of the citizen-soldier upon the remembrance and gratitude 
of his neighbors and friends. It is this ordinary and average 
jDcrformance of duty, involving, as it did, for each and every 
good soldier, just as much courage, fidelity and devotion as were 
displayed by the most brilliant and gifted corps commander, 
which we wish especially to recognize and commemorate here. 

It is for this reason, I said at the beginning, that it was a 
matter almost of congratulation that these men were so nearly 
ecpial and uniform in their rank and fortunes. And for the same 
reason it is, perhaps, better not to dwell at length here upon the 
individual merit of particular soldiers, although among these 
dead are some who were conspicuous, even among the faithful, 
for their resolution and cheerfulness. It is better that they 
should remain equal in the grave, for the sacrifice of home and 
hopes and life Avas the same to each ; and after all, it might be 
that, when the praise had been distributed with an impartial 
hand according to desert, as man judgeth, there might be some, 
least praised and most scantily remembered, who, as God seeth, 
were most deserving of all, and contributed more, out of their 
poverty, toward the establishment of Union and freedom than 
many a belaced and bestarred biigadier. 

But while refraining thus from any attempt to characterize 
the indiA-idual services of our North Brookfield soldiers, it would 



16 

be doing injustice to my OAvn feelings, and I believe, to yours, 
to withhold a single word in especial recognition of the inex- 
haustible cheerfulness and the undaunted courage of Charles 
Perry, the very ideal of a soldier of the Young Guard ; the 
l)rofound and thoughtful pati-iotism of Holman, who died a 
veteran soldier at the age of eighteen ; the neat and graceful 
soldiership of Charles Ashby ; the marked conscientiousness of 
Gilbert ; the many high qualities of James Knight and John 
Henry Jenks, good citizens as well as good soldiers ; the long 
and fiithful sei-vices of Nathan S. Dickinson ; the frank and 
impetuous character of McCarty, fair representative as he was 
of the Irish- American soldier ; the manly bearing of Sergeant 
Potter, in his single, brief campaign ; and the courage, proved 
on more than one bloody field, of Fretts and Coolidge, Clark 
and Sherman. Nor can the most rapid enumeration omit to 
acknowledge the costly contribution of that father among lis 
who gave two brave boys to die for their country, one on that 
field of high renown, the first Fredericksburg — the other in the 
prison-jDens of Andersonville. What one of the propertied men 
of North Brookfi eld has paid a war tax like this? May the 
sympathy of his fellow-citizens be to the father in place of his 
sons; and may a just pride in their courage and devotion 
assuage the regrets and comfort the loneliness of age. 

I have spoken of fourteen of our North Brookfield soldiers 
who fell honorably in battle and died of lingering wounds ; and 
again of sixteen who, with not less patriotism and devotion, nor 
deserving your honor and gratitude less, gave up their lives in 
hosjiital, burning with fever contracted in the pestilential 
marshes of the South, or wasting away in a long and painful 
decline, induced by the almost unprecedented hardships and 
exposures of the war. But this does not make the tale of our 
losses comijlete. Another there was who went out from us and 
came not back to us. The record against his name Avas not an 
honorable one. The cause and manner of his death were 
painful and shameful as any known to the criminal law of war. 



17 

Yet the surviving soldiers of North Brookfiekl have voted 
unanimously to have his name placed upon this monument, and 
I can honestly and freely say that my own judgment a])proves 
this decision. WilHam F. Hill, of the 20th Massachusetts 
regiment, suffered as a deserter at Brandy Station, Va., on the 
28th of August, 1863. In recording his name with those of hrave 
and loyal men who fell nobly fighting in the front of battle, we 
mean no disrespect to their memory. We intend no apology 
for the grievous crime of desertion, which richly merits its 
penalty of death. This action — questionable enough on a 
mere statement of it, and demanding an ami)]e explanation, or 
else this monumental stone were better not raised at all — has 
been taken in the full conviction of all his comrades in the field 
and his neighboi's at home, that William F. Hill, in that for 
whicli he suifered, was not properly and fully an accountable 
person. 

Had there been a just representation of the case, and a calm 
investigation been made into the competency of the convicted 
man, he would probably have been discharged from the guard 
house and the service. But the time was not favorable to nice 
discriminations. For two years we had carried on a war 
without adequate discipline. The mistaken lenity — one is 
tempted to call it the maudlin philanthropy — of the authorities 
at Washington, rendered it perfectly hopeless to inflict the death 
penalty for the worst crimes of which a soldier can be guilty — 
desertion in the face of the enemy, cowardice in action, slee])ing 
upon post. No matter how clear the case or imperative the 
necessity of punishment, pardon was just as sure to follow 
conviction as day to follow night. So monstrous had this 
wrong become, so plain and incontestible the injury resulting 
from it, that, after the battle of Gettysburg, the new commander 
of the Potomac army, strong in the reputation acquired on that 
glorious field, and supported by the military as well as the civil 
opinion of the country, was enabled to enforce the jienalty of 
death for desertion. Now, wlien the principle of lenity has 



18 

been long and grossly abused, the first exercises of severity will 
gencrall}' be excessive. It is almost inevitably so ; and the fault 
belongs, on any just survey of the facts, not to those who have 
undertaken to restore the law and reform abuses, but to those 
who, by their ill-considered clemency, have made this a work 
of great difKculty. 

At the time to which I refer, the edict having gone forth that 
desertion was to be treated as a crime and deserters to be 
punished, the few weeks during which the Potomac army 
rested on the Rappahannock in the summer of 1863 witnessed 
arrests, tiials and executions altogether unknown before or 
since. In their zeal to obey orders, and perhaps, also to secure 
rewards, provost marshals arrested, among others, some whom 
it would have been wisdom and humanity to overlook ; in their 
sense of the monstrous wrong which the army had suffered 
fi'om indiscriminate lenity toward offenders, court martials 
convicted in some cases where otherwise they might have seen 
occasion to doubt ; and in a sort of self-distrust, a feeling that 
if they gave way at all to the rage for pardoning, it would 
become impossible to carry out the stern determination at 
which they had arrived, the authorities charged with reviewing 
the proceedings and confirming the sentences of the courts, 
failed in some instances to exercise that discrimination which, 
under circumstances which brought less strain upon their 
firmness, they would have exercised. I was personally cog- 
nizant of more than one case of hardship, where, although the 
accused was technically guilty, the degree of crime was so 
small, and the mitigating circumstances so numerous and 
powerful, that the execution of the sentence was an act of 
mistaken policy, if not of actual injustice. I think the bravest 
man I ever saw die was shot for desertion, a hundred yards in 
front of my tent, during tliis bloody season. 

The case of William F. Hill is believed to be of this descrip- 
tion. My recollection is that I drew and signed the order which 
assembled the court martial for his trial. The proceedings of 



19 

the court jiassed through my hands going up for review, and 
tlie sentence of death was made official to the general of division 
by my signature. Yet in neither of these instances did it occur 
to me that it was a fellow-townsman who was being sentenced to 
an ignominious death. Had Hill belonged to the 15th regiment 
— certainly if to Company F — the name must have struck me 
familiarly and awakened inquiry. Had I known who it Avas 
upon whom the sentence was passed, I believe I do not overrate 
my credit with the general commanding the army, in saying that 
I could have prevented the execution, by representing at head- 
quarters the character and circumstances of the prisoner. As 
it was, the name merely attracted no attention ; and it was not 
until long after the volley of the provost guard had returned 
dust to dust, that I learned the fate of William F. Hill. 

It is in the conviction that this one of our North Brookfield 
soldiers was only technically guilty of the crime of desertion, 
which tens of thousands committed wilfully and wickedly, 
flagrantly and frequently, yet AvhoUy escaped punishment ; and 
that the character of his mind and the circumstances of his life 
were such as to reduce his responsibility for such an act to very 
narrow limits ; it is in this conviction, with the earnest desire to 
do what may yet remain to undo the wrong which was iinin- 
tentionally committed, that we place his name upon this 
monument, among the names of men who fell gallantly in 
the front of battle, or died of disease incurred in the high and 
honorable discharge of duty. And we believe that the hearts 
and consciences of all present here, to-day, will approve and 
confirm this decision. 

What, my friends, are the lessons of this hour? Why have 
we reared this shaft upon our village green ? What have we 
set it to show and teach ? This stone certainly will not teach 
the love of war and of glory. Standing before a monument to 
some illustrious commander, whose name sounds still like a 
trumpet blast on the ears of a nation, tliere are few men of bold 
and generous spirit who can remain unmoved by the recollection 



20 

of his exploits and the contemplation of his fame. It is no credit 
to a man to be opposed to war because he has not nerve and 
pluck enough for its fierce contests ; nor is he a noble lover of 
peace wlio has no ajiprehension of what is splendid and brilliant 
in battle. Who could stand before the monument of Nelson 
without being filled and thrilled and overpowered with the 
greatness and the glory of a life and a death so superb, so 
magnificent ? In such a presence we forget liow much war 
costs ; the terrible tax of sorrow it lays upon unoffending and 
uninterested millions ; the awful waste of human life and social 
])ower which it involves ; the debt and beggary it entails upon 
unborn generations. No wonder such a man as Southey — mild, 
peaceful and benign, but a thoroughly manly man — was carried 
away by his theme Avhen he wrote the life of Nelson. Who, 
indeed, can contemplate that life of glory, growing ever brighter 
and brighter, to its close, and expiring at last in such a radiance 
of splendor — death itself crowning life with the perfect fullness 
of honor and fame — and not feel that such a life were worth a 
thousand deaths, and such a death worth a thousand ordinary 
lives? 

But Avhen we stand before such a memorial stone as this we 
dedicate to-day, we realize what war means ; we see here what 
glory costs. There were thirty young men in this remote and 
peaceful village who must die for nothing else than that there 
was war — husbands, sons and brothers; what a war tax North 
Brookfield had to pay! And yet hardly a village within our 
land but made an equal contribution of its youthful blood and 
strength. Had the struggle been for temtory, or commercial 
supremacy, or for glory, or for " satisfiiction " for any real or 
imagined Avrong, what an awful price this would have been to 
pay! IIow unworthy every object in comparison but human 
liberty and national unity ! 

Yet this is war. And it is right and wholesome that this 
stone should rise in perpetual testimony, a witness sparing or 
ceasing not to the desolations and the misery of war. So may 



21 

it be with us ; nnd wliile Ave grudge not that wliich Ave did 
and suffered for union and liberty, may we fully resolve tluxt 
nothing but an equal necessity shall ever again call for such 
conti'ibutions and sacrifices. Let this monument to our deceased 
brothers kee}) always before our minds this lesson of the horror 
and mischief of war. Let it remain a perpetual motive for 
peace and international good-Avill. Let it instruct our youth 
Avho themselves shall have known nothing of those distressful 
days of anguished partings and heart-breaking news of battle, 
or having known do but dimly remember — let it instruct them 
in a wholesome dread of Avar, not from any ]iersonal fear of Avhat 
might come to themseh es out of it, but from simple, human, 
Christian compassion for the sorroAV and bereaA'ement Avhich Avar 
ahvays brings in its train. And, as our minds are imbued Avith 
a literature all agloAV Avith the romance of cam})aign and battle ; 
as we catch the thrilling strains of martial enthusiasm from the 
j)oet, the orator, and ( O hideous incongruity ! ) the preacher of 
Christ's gospel of peace, let this monumental stone teach us what 
Avar truly is. 

God grant that the mournful eloquence of these soldiers' 
monuments, rising as they do in every village and hamlet of this 
broad land, may so impress their lesson on the minds and hearts 
of our people that the craft of statesmen and the selfish zeal of 
demagogues shall evermore be poAverless to draw the nation 
from the paths of peace. Rarely gifted in our seclusion from 
the irritating controversies of Eurojiean diplomacy ; Avith no 
fatal heritage of dissention and hate ; with no nation in the 
same hemisphere which does not exist by our sufferance, and 
with none in the old world that can hope to get gain or glory 
out of us ; Avith no complaint against any that Avoidd justify a 
single day of Avar, and Avith the cordial sympathy of two of the 
most poAverful nations of the future ; Avith greatness and Avealth 
unparalleled and unbounded, secured to us by our geographical 
position and endowments; and with our OAvn unity finnly 
established by the pathetic sacrifice Avliich we here commemorate, 



22 

wliy should Ave e'\'cr ngain draw tlic sword ? What cause of 
complaint can ever exist -which it will not he jjossihle, with a 
spirit of conciliation and forbearance, to adjust without loss of 
power, reputation or self-respect ? Is it conceivable that folly 
and madness shall ever prevail so far as to render it necessary 
for us again to send out our sons and brothers to die by 
liundreds and thousands on distant fields ? Is it possible that a 
future generation shall be called to found another such monu- 
ment as this, to commemorate another company of gallant men, 
sent from this bright world in the pride of strength and youth '? 

And if the war of the rebellion was indeed to be our last war 
as a nation, if this pathetic sacrifice is never again to be 
repeated, how appropriate and just that such a monument as 
this should signalize and commemoi-ate deeds destined to be so 
grandly historical ; virtue and patriotism so well worthy to be 
held up to the admiration and imitation of succeeding gener- 
ations more fortunate than ourselves. 

And, firstly, this monument represents the idea of supreme 
duty to country. Let this be the lesson it shall teach to us and 
to the generations that follow us. It has frequently been said 
that prior to the outbreak of the rebellion, Americans hardly 
realized that they had a country, or, at least, that they were 
citizens of a nation. The miserable chicane of national politics 
had indeed not seldom aroused the passions and enlisted the 
sympathies of the wliole people ; but politics have little enough 
to do with patriotism ; many of the patriotic people in the world 
have had no politics; and it was literally true that only by the 
quadrennial wrangle for power and place did we know ourselves 
as citizens of a great nation. We were not even proud of our 
country. Conceit and vanity, indeed, we had, and quite enough 
of them. A boastfulness that Avas ofiensive, and a jealous and 
angry sensitiveness that betrayed the want of self-respect, were 
among the characteristics which justly excited the ridicide of 
foreigners. But we do not live and move and have our being 
in the honor and jxnver of our countrv, as Englishmen or 



23 

Frenolnnen Imve. The several States had charge of all tlie 
concerns which belong to social and domestic life. The national 
goA'ernnient was to the daily thouglits of our citizens hardly less 
a myth, than the wretched doctrine of secession and state rights 
sought to make it out to hi' in law. 

Fortunately, when the great trial came, it was found that 
other causes had preserved the vital instinct of patriotism. The 
heroic impulses and forces of the revolutionary time were still 
strong enough to save the nation. The traditions of f lith and 
courage and devotion availed, even in the absence of a present 
culture, to command the energies of the people in the hour of 
its great agony. Never did "blood tell" more distinctly and 
emphatically. No sooner was the first gun fired, than the whole 
nation returned to the feelings and sentiments of its early life. 
The names of the past were found to be more potent tlian the 
forces of the present. 

It is to maintain and cherish this sentiment of supreme 
obligation which was happily found to exist, though latent, in 
the hearts of our countrymen, in the hour of our peril, but 
Avhich Ave had haixlly a right to ex])ect to find — it is to make 
this sentiment a part of the future education of our people, so 
that the duty shall be alike proclaimed by all and accepted by 
all, that such monuments as these should be founded all over the 
land. Nor do we wish simply to insure that another trial, when 
it comes to the nation, shall find the traditions of loyalty and 
patriotism as lively and strong as they were at the outbreak of 
the rebellion. We would deepen and intensify these feelings, 
and impress this great lesson by all possible urgency and 
frequency of precept and illustration, so that, should we ever 
again be called to enter on such a desperate struggle for national 
existence, it shall not be said to our shame that the stream of 
volunteering ran dry in two years of war; that, instead of 
bidding for })laces, we came to bid for men ; that we exchanged 
the eager emulation of 18G1-2 for the tardiness and reluctance 
of 18G34. 



24 

I speak plainly. No reflection is intended on those who 
accepted the bounty of the federal government, or of their state 
or toAvn, on entering the service. When such premiums are 
offered, he would be over-scrupulous who should refuse them. 
It was hard enough to support a family on the scanty wages of 
a soldier, paid in dishonored and depreciated paper, with all the 
help which the soldier was likely to obtain from any quarter. 
The shame was that it became first difiicult, and then impossible 
to obtain good men, or finally any kind of men, on the most 
liberal terms which patriotism or the fear of the draft could 
offer. " Seven hundred dollars and a cow " is rather a high 
price for a raw recruit ; and this monument and such monuments 
as these will be cheap in a money point of view — to urge no 
other or nobler consideration — if they shall so instruct the 
rising generation in the sentiments of devotion to country, and 
of manly self-respect, that it will never be necessary again to 
eke the quotas of our New England towns by coaxing young 
boys to enlist, or enticing feeble-minded youth from the safe 
retreats which the charity of the State has provided. 

These are the sentiments of one soldier, and he believes he 
may add in behalf of the soldiers of North Brookfield, " So say 
we all of us." May this monumental stone so teach and so 
preach, that whenever again the life of the nation is at stake, 
there shall be, from first to last, an eager emulation among the 
young men of the country for the posts of honor and danger, 
and such a social sentiment among all classes and sexes that no 
one can forbear to answer the call for men, unless his engage- 
ments of family or business are such as — not in his own opinion, 
but in that of the community — to debar him, positively, from 
the privilege. 

Secondly, this monument stands as a token of jjersonal 
remembrance, personal affection and personal gratitude, on the 
part of the citizens of this town, toward each and all of the 
deceased, fallen as they have in our behalf and in our stead. 
By this sculptured stone we acknowledge our obligation to 



25 

remember and honor these men individually and personally. 
Nor let us think that this is a matter of course. The claim they 
have on us is not to be satisfied by vague declarations about 
liberty and union, by paneoyiics on the proclamation of eman- 
cipation and the fifteenth amendment of the constitution, by 
general tributes to the long-suffering courage and devotion of 
our troops, nor even by hearty admiration for the average or the 
ideal soldier of the republic. It was not " the cause " that bled 
from wounds or burned with fever. It was not the cause w hich 
made long and wearisome marches, which stood on picket dark 
and stormy nights, which went hungry many a day, and slaked 
its thirst at slimy pools from which dumb creatures turned 
in disgust. It was not the cause that sufiered exile for years 
from all that makes life pleasant, and finally lay down to die 
upon the trampled sod of the battlefield, or amid the rude 
discomforts of a crowded hospital. Neither was it the ideal 
American soldier Avho did these things. Mighty little, indeed, 
did the ideal soldier do, anyway. He made his appearance 
princi})ally in the pages of Harper s Weekly^ and performed his 
feats of daring almost exclusively in the diaries of army 
chai)lains. It was not even the average soldier, rough, brave 
and ca^jable, who won our liberties. It was done by actual 
soldiers, veritable men of flesh and blood, from real northern 
and western homes ; some of them, no doubt, not a bit better 
than they ought to be. But still they did it. Many of them 
had faults enough, but they died in our place ; weaknesses 
enough, but they upheld and saved the state. 

It is very cheap and easy to go into ra]»tures over a cause, 
forgetting individual meii, their merits and their claims. It is 
very jileasant and natural to acknowledge obligations to our 
patriotic defenders in the abstract, while cherishing a sort of 
contemptuous pity for some of them whom we fuicy not to have 
been quite as wise, or correct, or successful in worldly matters 
as ourselves. By no such vague and impersonal acknowledg- 
ments shall we discharge our duty to these dea(L We owe 



26 

them, singly and individually, our friendly remembrance, our 
charitable construction of every fault or failing; our heartfelt 
gratitude, personally and by name, for all they did and all they 
endured ; our sympathy, our society and our aid, in all readiness 
and cheerfulness, for every unhaj)py dependant left to mourn 
this loss. 

I have not had the spirit to talk to you to-day of the fifteenth 
amendment, of emancipation and reconstruction, of the lessons 
and the results of the Avar, or of any of the themes "which are 
I^opular upon occasions like this. My heart has been too full 
of the thoiTghts of these men, my playmates and comrades. 
Let the politicians settle it among themselves, how to secure the 
fruits of all this sacrifice and all this effort. Nay, at another 
time and elsewhere it will be our duty and privilege as citizens 
and patriots, to provide that not one drojj of this precious blood 
shall be lost, but that, by the gracious blessing of our fathers' 
God, this mournful sacrifice of manly courage, of tender aflfec- 
tions and youthful hope, shall minister to the dignity, purity and 
freedom of the state which they loved and for which they died. 
But, to-day, let proclamations and constitutional amendments, 
reconstruction and suffrage pass, and let us meet around this 
monumental stone, neighbors and friends, it may be also fathers, 
brothers and sons, mourning the patriotic death of these good 
men and true; lifting up our voices together in testimony to 
their courage, their generosity and their faithfulness; and 
promising ourselves and each other that so long as we live and 
this sculptured granite shall rise among us, we will reverently 
think ui)on them, tenderly speak of them, and hold them up to 
the honor and imitation of our sons. 

And now I come to a ])ortion of ray remarks which, if the 
object were merely to deli\er a smooth and graceful address, 
and i)roduce a favorable impression, ignoiing carefully all that 
might exact unpleasant reflections or provoke unpleasant recol- 
lections, glozing over the surface with fair and fine Avords, and 
bringing into light only those aspects of the occasion which are 



27 

harmonious and agreeable, I should certainly avoid, as I might 
easily do. But I owe a duty to truth, a duty to these dead, 
which will not allow me to pass this theme in silence. 

There are some men and boys in every village whom our New 
England civili/.ation does not know what to do Avith. They do 
not take kindly to schooling, to meeting-going, or to work. 
They do not earn, or else they do not save. They offend against 
Iiroi)riety in a thousand ways, great and small ; and it is Avell if 
a sense of strangeness and unsatisfaction does not drive them 
into offenses against morality or law. They are often in 
mischief, and always in disgrace with Mrs. Grundy. Men and 
boys of this stamp our New England civilization does not know 
how to treat. No form of human civilization ever made so 
much out of material fitted to its purposes ; none ever had so 
little power to put to use material not according to its patterns. 
No human society has ever achieved a greater success where 
ours succeeds ; none ever confessed such lamentable failures 
Avhere ours fails. The degree of that success is the measure of 
that failure. There is no place for the " ne'er do weel " in New 
England. If a young man will not be decorous and industrious ; 
if he does not take kindly to the stated means of ordinary and 
religious education, and especially if he loves not the tea-j^arty 
and the church fair, society can only shake its head and confess 
its inability to do anything with him or for him. 

Is not this so? Let us put it to our memories and our 
consciences what single thing we do for a young man who is 
a little wild, after, it may be, he has rejected one or two well- 
intentioned offers of tracts, supposed to be particularly suited to 
his case ? In what way do we try to win him on to good, and 
keep him from going to the bad? IIow far do we relax the 
grim severity and prim propriety which we affect, to conciliate 
his different, and, let us say, much less commendable tastes and 
fancies? No, we can do nothing for the ne'er-do-weel in New 
England. 

I do not mean to revile our Puritan civilization. It has 



28 

accomplished wonderful results. It has achieved magnificent 
successes. It has created a society not equaled upon earth, or 
in history. Intelligence, morality, quiet and wealth, beyond the 
enjoyment of any other people, have been the results of the 
New England standard of life, and for such success we may 
well accept all the failure that may be actually necessary in 
reaching it. But at least we may have a word of charity for 
those who cannot quite find a place in this order of ours, and so 
feel themselves of no use in the Avorld, and, perhaps, failing of 
sympathy, or irritated by too severe repi-ehension of the venial 
errors or follies of youth, break away from restraint, and are 
regarded and treated as the black sheep of our society. Nay, 
may we not even enquire whether we might not do something 
ibr them, and without derogating aught from the noble results 
of the past, contrive some gracious means to save a part of this 
wealth of energy, aspiration and passion, which every year goes 
to waste among us ? 

The reason for this partial, yet, if partial, most melancholy, 
failure of our civilization in dealing with the youth of New 
England, is that the tests which society adopts, though admirably 
suited for purposes of discijiline, and to secure the highest 
eificiency of the ])ublic body as a whole, are intrinsically unjust 
and often very cruel. All the virtues which public opinion 
recognizes (and public opinion is, in the fullest and most 
despotic sense, law in New England), are negative. A man 
must not, with us, do certain things. If he satisfies society in 
this, there is no exaggeration in saying that no higher test is 
applied to his deserving. Now, I admit that it would be well, 
and a most happy state of things, if every young man with hot 
blood, high temper and sanguine hopes, Avere as wise as his 
father at the age of forty or sixty has become, and if he fully 
appreciated all the sage and prudential reasons which direct the 
female public mind of these north-eastern States. But since, by 
something very like God's appointment, this is not so, it is surely 



29 

a great pity that so mucli sjurit, courage and energy is allowed 
to run to waste, or to worse. 

It is bad enough when society has to reject any })ortion of its 
menibership as no longer of any use or worth to itself; but 
unfortunately, in our niodcni civilization, Avhat is thrown aside 
as refuse is often the noblest material of society. For I dare 
to say in the face of New England propriety, looking into those 
cold, gray eyes, and encountering the full effect of that stony 
stare, I dare to say that courage and generosity are virtues in 
the human character, and not the least among virtues. Society 
to be sure, has little use for them, and so makes but little 
account of them. It has arranged all its joarts and offices on 
the principle that a rational selfishness is the best preservative 
of peace, and the most active and efficient agent of progress ; 
and more romantic notions or less constant forces only disturb 
its calculations, and interrupt its regular working. The virtues 
it most values are those which best qualify a man to seek and 
secure his own interest. 

This is not to say that our social conditions make us all 
cowardly or selfish, but I do venture to assert, and I appeal to 
the consciences of all who hear me, in confirmation, that the 
present organization of society utterly ignores those two highest 
qualities of the manly character, generosity and courage. No 
man needs them to rise in society or hold his place there. All 
the influences which surround us tend to disparage these traits 
and to develop a spirit of self-carefulness, a disposition to evade 
every uni)leasant experience or rough encounter, and a high 
intentness to coddle and pamper self. Selfishness, by which is 
not, of course, meant a miserly penuriousness or a ravening 
greed, but an elegant, deferential, smooth-faced and well-spoken 
delicacy to self and indifference to others, is eating the heart out 
of our modern society. We remain on terms of personal 
intimacy for years with men, without a single opportunity to 
learn their real disposition ; without one occasion offering when 



30 

society recognizes in us the right to ask, or in them the duty to 
grant, a single thing which involves hardship or sacrifice. 

All this is not aside from my purpose, nor, I think, unworthy of 
your serious consideration. Men went from among us to the 
war, of wliom we had not been accustomed, measuring ourselves 
by ourselves and comparing ourselves among ourselves — to 
think very highly; men who did not take kindly to the artificial 
manners and the arbitrary morality of "the neighborhood;" 
wanting somewhat in that sublime quality of looking out for 
one's self, which is the visible fulfillment of the law; men, some 
of whom we characterized as their own worst enemies, who had 
not found a place in this modern order, and for whom society 
had not yet found much to do ; men of whom ( I hope it is not 
an ofience against charity to intimate it) it was thought and 
said, that while Avishing them well and with the kindest feelings 
toward them, society could afford to spare much better than 
others. 

We ask not and like not the sympathy, on this occasion, of 
any man who feels in this way. Speaking for my fellow-soldiers, 
for the living and for the dead, and for the friends of the men 
we commemorate to-day, I reject such associations ; I repudiate 
and resent such injurious imputations. The courage, devotion 
and generosity which our soldiers disj^layed in camp and on the 
march, in hospital, in battle and in prison iDcns, were as much 
higher and holier than the mean virtues which make a man 
merely respectable in common life, as the heavens are higher 
than the earth. Some of these men did deeds that would shame 
the heroes of the revolution. They sufiered and bravely endured 
pains and trials that put them on a level with the martyrs of the 
Christian faith. They had cut no great figure, some of them, at 
home ; but they looked well enough, standing there on the 
perilous edge of fight. Society, with its petty cares and selfish 
interests, had found no place for them, but they found their own 
place in the deadly danger of the nation. They had never done 



31 

very well for themselves, but they knew how to do aiul dare and 
die for country. 

War affords the surest and most searching test of character. 
I have said that two men may live near neighbors at home for 
years, yet neither have occasion to ask what it is a pain to the 
other to give. But two men never made a march in file, or went 
through a tour of picket duty together, or moved into action 
shoulder to shouldei-, but if one was a pig the other knew it. 
No well trained hypocrisy can stand against the revelations of a 
campaign. No superficial polish of manner can hide selfishness, 
coldness or cowardice here. No mere habit of politeness will 
conceal the real disposition of the heart. 

You know how thousands of our soldiers met this test ; how 
cheerful in hardships, how faithful to duty, how kind and true 
to comrades, how patient and uncomplaining in sickness and 
wounds, how peaceful and brave in death. Men little known 
before, and that perhaps not very favorably, exhibited such valor, 
fortitude and faith as made all beholders wonder. Deeds of 
sacrifice and devotion were performed by rough and untaught 
men, which shame all history and romance. The beautiful act 
of that star of chivalry upon the field of Zutphen was repeated 
a thousand times during our war by men who never heard the 
name of Sidney. Men uncouth in manner and not particularly 
correct in life, preferred the claims of others, even at the very 
table where mangled limbs were to be cut away by the knife of 
the surgeon ; they shared with strangers the scanty crust which 
was thrown to them to prolong the agonies of starvation ; and 
around many an unplaned board in a rebel prison was exhibited 
a courtesy such as never graced the dinner of an emperor. 

Perhaps I cannot give a better idea of the kind of man I have 
in mind, than by mentioning a gallant fellow who lay next, or 
next but one, to me in the hospital of Libby prison, an officer of 
the 1st Michigan sharpshooters — a regiment, by the way, 
commanded by a North Brookfield soldier, Col. Charles Deland. 
This man was shot through the leg, and through both shoulders. 



32 

in one of the September fights, so that on whichever side he lay 
he pressed a hot and angry wound. Yet for weeks together I 
never heard his voice except in answer to a question. All the 
time he was in hospital I never heard him utter a groan. He 
never made a complaint. I never even knew him call an 
attendant to smooth his ])illow or bring a glass of water. One 
day, however we left Richmond together. My friend, his 
Avounds still unhealed, was taken off his bed at six o'clock and 
carried out to the ambulance, jolted for a mile over paved 
streets, then laid down on the deck of a steamer to lie there until 
noon ; then taken up again on a stretcher, put ashore, lifted into 
an ambulance ( a Yankee ambulance this time, thank God ! ) 
driven a mile and a half, stretchered again, and finally, at five or 
six o'clock in the evening, put on board the good steamer " City 
of New York," his day's work done, a pretty hard day's work 
for a well man, let alone one with three bullet holes in him. 
Happening soon after to go down on to the lower deck of the 
steamer, I was arrested on the stairs by a fearful groaning below, 
and, stooping down, could see that it came from my silent, 
patient friend of the hospital. You may imagine that I stopped 
short in something like horror, for when such a man took to 
groaning, be sure it meant intolerable agony. In a moment 
more the groaning ceased, and I went to his side. To an inquiry 
how he felt, he replied very cheerfully. He had got vei-y tired, 
he said, lying all day on the side on which he had only one 
wound, so he had tried for a few minutes to lie upon the other 
in order to rest himself; but had been obliged to give it up, it 
had hurt him so. Now, my friends, that kind of S})int was not 
rare in the ])atriot army, and you nuist not wonder that those 
who saw it exhibited are inclined to set it higher than the 
"rascally virtues" of peace, and the prim respectabilities of New 
England life; tliat we can forgive a great deal of youthful Avild- 
ness and folly, i)r()vided tliat when such tests of manhood came, 
they were met with fortitude and selt-forgetfulness like that of 
the Michigan sharp-shooter. 



33 

Nor shall we justly remember these men if we call them to 
mind simply as they were when they went out from among us. 
There Avas not one of them that faithfully served his country 
and courageously followed the flag, upon whom a change did 
not pass, greater than that which is usually wrought by the 
experiences of a score of years. Many of them boys, they 
passed at once from the gristle to the solid bone of manhood. 
Thoughtless and even idle, as some of thom had been, they were 
brought fice to face with trials from which mature men might 
shrink, yet acquitted themselves in all respects nobly. The 
change of character which followed upon these experiences we 
shall do wrong to overlook. A year, a month, a week is some- 
times a very short time ; sometimes again it embraces half the 
facts of a long life. Boys over night rise up men. Vacillation 
gives way, once for all, to steady purpose, frivolity to earnestness, 
the spirit of self-indulgence to a capability of endurance and of 
effort almost passing belief. A single battle has done this for 
many a soldier ; changed the whole tone of his being, and made 
him in every resj^ect a different man. No one who has ever 
served with troops will deem this fantastical, or merely possible. 
I do not mean to assert that such a change passed upon all our 
soldiers, or that the change was never for the worse ; but no 
man ever commanded a company who has not seen more than 
one thoughtless, idle boy rise to a splendid and resolute man- 
hood under the first touch of war's trials and responsibilities. 

So would I believe of every soldier here represented. I 
would assume that, as others surely did, he found all the noble 
possibilities of his nature forming into character under the heroic 
excitements and the magnificent opportunities of a war of 
patriotism and a war of liljerty. Nay, my hope and faith would 
never leave him, though defeated by melancholy and mortifying 
evidence, down to the very monient when disease stretched him 
on the scanty pallet of the hospital, or, struck by the fatal bullet, 
he fell to gasp away his life on the trampled battle-field. What 
has not an hour wrought, an hour of such thoughts, such feelings 



34 

as crowd tliemselvcs into the dying moments of a man ? Ask 
your army nurses how many wounded men, how many dying 
of disease, but conscious and composed, they ever heard repine 
at tlieir lot or regret their choice. Looking death calmly in the 
face, leaving all the hopes and joys of life, without even the 
consolation of bidding adieu to friends, these men then if never 
before, realized the nobleness of duty and of sacrifice ; and when 
life was sweetest, because just about to depart, they resigned it 
without a murmur. Nay, though the fatal bullet had passed 
through heart or brain, I would not give up my faith and hope. 
Do you remember what some one says in Mrs. Stowe's Minister's 
Wooing of the sudden death of a sailor, that from mast-head to 
deck was time enough for divine grace to operate in ? Then let 
us not believe ( why should we ? what right have we ? ) that 
one of these men fell in his place without a thought worthy of 
his immortal spirit, without an impulse of devoted patriotism, 
without, once for all, consenting to his own death for country 
and for liberty. 

My friends, of the thirty-one soldiers Avhose names are written 
on this shaft, but seven lie buried with our village dead. Of the 
rest, some were accorded the burial, hurried and rude, yet not 
without honor, which comrades give to comrades between two 
days of desperate battle. Others were thrown unregarded into 
the sorrowful wide trenches which are dug upon every field for 
the dead of the vanquished army. Others, alas ! lie in unmarked 
graves, just outside the fearful stockades in which their lives 
wasted away through suiferings of body and of mind to which 
the annals of human cruelty hardly furnish a parallel. 

But wherever our brave boys lie, w^hether beneath a turf daily 
strewn with flowers and watered with tears, or in undistinguished 
graves on southern soil; whether beneath tlie monumental 
marble, or in the ghastly pits of the battle field, like Shaw, 
"buried with his niggers" — w^e know that they are marked and 
guarded by Him who is the resurrection and the life, and who, 
out of the mingled dust of friend and foe, of young and old, of 



35 

white and black, shall build i;p again the perfect frame of each, 
to be no more subject to decay, disease and death. 

Peaceful be their repose ! Joyful their awakening ! Perfect 
and unalloyed the fruition of their renewed and immortal life ! 
Though we cannot watch over their long sleep, we know they 
are not unattended. 

"By fairy hands their knell is rung; 
By forms unseen their dirge is sung; 
Tlierc Honor comes, a pilgrim grey, 
To bless the turf that wraps their clay ; 
And Freedom shall awhile repair, 
To dwell a weeping hermit there." 



GEN. DEVENS" ADDRESS. 



Fellow Citizens : 

With the sound of the noble oration from my comrade and 
friend, to which we have just listened, still vibrating on our 
ears, and its sentiments still holding their first impression on our 
hearts, I feel that I can add little that would interest you, yet I 
will not disguise my gratification that by a contingency which 
I could not have anticijjated when I received your invitation, 
which I then felt comjDelled to decline, I have been enabled to 
be present on this deeply impressive occasion, and with you to 
bring my tribute to, and lay my wi'eath upon, the memorial you 
have this day consecrated to the brave departed. 

It has given me, also, sincere pleasure to feel again, to-day, 
the cordial grasp of the hand of so many who were my own 
comrades in the conflict through which we have passed, to meet 
again the patriotic citizens of this prosperous town, which has 
given so lavishly of its blood and its treasure, and especially to 
greet those of them, survivors of the war of 1812,* who so fitly 
grace your front seats at this gathering. Soldiers of an earlier 
generation, they have come to bear their testimony to the valor 
and worth of the generation which has succeeded them, and on 
my own behalf, and on that of all my comrades, I pay them 
the homage of our most aflTectionate respect and regard. 
" Better and braver men " said the late Lieut. Gen. Scott, in my 



* Veterans of the War of 1812.— Dea. Joseph A. Moore, Daniel Tucker, Parker 
Joliuson, Cheney Dewing, Anson Giflin, Thomas A. Harwood, Perley Ayres. 



presence, "tlian Massacliusetts sent to tlie -war of 181'2, no 
general ever led on tlie field of battle." 

The military history of IMassaohusetts is a long and honorable 
one, and they tliat were her soldiers of 1861, may boast of a 
brave and true lineage, for they have a right to claim their 
descent through the soldiers of 1812, through the soldiers of the 
Revolution, through the soldiers Avho, twenty years befoie the 
Revolution, carried the old Provincial flag of Massachusetts, 
side by side with the great British ensign, up the heights on 
the day when Wolfe stormed Quebec ; back to the stern Puritan 
soldiers who, in those days when Brookfield Avas a frontier ])ost, 
with the ploughshare in one liand and the musket in the other, 
maintained their conflict with the inhosjiitable climate, the 
rugged soil, the murderous savage, and laid broad and deep the 
foundation of a truly free commonwealth. It is enough for 
the soldiers of the war of the rebellion, if it be admitted that 
in their hands the white standard of Massachusetts has 
suffered no spot or stain of dishonor, and if they are acknowl- 
edged as the legitimate descendants of such a race of men, and 
are recognized as the "bronze recast of the old heroic ages." 

We have met to-day, by consecrating this monument to the 
brave dead who have died for their country, to honor the 
memory of those citizens who, unused to the trade of anus, 
might have looked forward to contented and. happy lives in the 
busy work-shops or well tilled fields around us, and yet who 
did not hesitate to lay aside the occupations of peace at the 
sacred call of patriotism, and to commit themselves to the 
shock of battle, appealing to the God of Battles for the justice 
of their cause. We have met, too, in deep and solemn remem- 
brance of the costly sacrifice which has been demanded of them, 
to consecrate ourselves anew to the great cause for which they 
have yielded u]? their lives, the cause of civil and religious 
liberty. 

Gi'ave and solemn as is the structure Ave rear, it is not funereal 
only, for it is intended rather to honor than to weep the dead. 

6 



88 

True it is, those whose names it bears will never be remembered 
by us except with a quivering lip and a moistened eye, for to us 
they stood in all the dearest and tenderest relations of life ; they 
were comrades and friends, they Avere husbands and lovers, they 
were brothers and sons, but the day w^ill come when no tears 
will dim the lustre of their glory. As the dead are always 
recalled by us as they were when they departed, as over them 
time seems to have lost its jjower, as Warren is to us the same 
youthful hero that he was as he rushed into the thickest of the 
fight at Bunker Hill, although nearly an hundred years have 
passed away since that eventful day, so these will live in their 
immortal youth long after the clods of the valley shall have 
pressed us down to our eternal rest. 

In that i^ortion of the Roman annals which tells the story of 
Hannibal, the most formidable opponent Rome ever knew, whose 
victories, sweeping over the Alps in anticipation of the great 
achievement of the first Napoleon, carried fire and sword up to 
the very gates of the mistress of the ancient world, it is related 
that when a child of nine years old his father Hamilcar, himself 
a chieftain and a warrior, whose renown has been ecli])sed by his 
greater son, brought him into the temple of the gods, and 
causing him to hold up his little hands, made him swear eternal 
hostility to the tyranny of Rome. Let this monument be an 
altar also, where your sons shall come to swear eternal hostility, 
not to one gras])ing power only, but to tyranny in its every 
shape and form, and eternal devotion to country and God. 

Justice and gratitude alike demand that every wise people 
should neglect no means of impressing strongly on those who 
were to come after them the deeds of these and such as these 
whom this monumental stone commemorates. And this not 
alone that the dead may be honored, but that the living may be 
animated by their examjile, and in their own hour of trial may 
draw inspiration and courage from the noble self-sacrifice of those 
who have preceded them. How strong and potent in every 
stage of our great conflict was the influence of our revolu- 



89 

tionary history, how much nearer we ourselves secmerl to be 
drawn to the men of that ehler day, how inspiring was the 
feeUng that the Hberty they had obtained it was our duty to 
guard, and that that which had been bought by tlieir blood was 
to be maintained by ours. Such thoughts as these have sustained 
the soldier in the wet bivouac, in the Aveary night march, in the 
stormy fight, and to the lips of many a brave man, lijis that were 
to know joy and grief no more, there has come a smile as he has 
remembered that he too had trod, and with no unequal footsteps 
either, in the paths marked out by our great forefathers. 

To us the death of these men, all young or in early middle 
life, seems premature, yet who does not feel that life to be full 
and complete which so thoroughly has met life's great ends. 
Who is there, in those moments of lofty aspiration that come to 
all of us, if he were permitted to choose Avhere he should meet 
the inevitable which advances so rapidly, would not wish 
for himself a fate like theirs. 

" In some good cause, not in mine own, 
To i>erish; wept for, honored, known, 
And like a warrior overthrown, 

Whose eyes are dim witli glorious tears. 
When soiled with noble dust he hears 
His country's war song in his ears. 

Then dying of a mortal stroke. 

What time the foemen's lines arc broke 

And all the war is rolled in smoke." 

From the fields where they fought the smoke has long since 
rolled away, great nature has resumed her wonted reign and 
covers each mound and bastion with her mantle of verdure, 
while the wheat waves and dallies with the summer winds on 
the plains once ploughed by the fiei'ce artillery, but the work 
they have done will not pass away. Whatever may be the 
anxieties of the present hour, the soldiers of the Republic have 
left behind them no task which its statesmen and its })eople 
cannot easily complete. 

Of those here commemorated I may be pardoned if I recollect 



40 

how many were of my own 15th Regiment. I call it my own 
because I was its first colonel, not because it was not better led 
afterwards by others. This was peculiarly a Worcester County 
Regiment, and within its limits, although its military desig- 
nations were the same with all others, yet the companies wore 
more frequently known by the names of the towns where they 
were raised and had their headquarters before being consolidated 
into the regimental organization. I can no doubt repeat them 
all to-day : thus. Company A was the Leominster Company ; B, 
the Fitchburg ; C, the Clinton ; D, the Worcester ; E, the 
Oxford ; F, from the Brookfields ; G, the Grafton ; H, the 
Northbridge ; I, the Webster ; and K, the Blackstone. It had, it 
is true, many gallant soldiers who did not come from these 
towns but from those in their immediate vicinity, but they were 
all of the County and rei)resentative of the whole County, for 
there was no section which did not furnish some brave men to 
its ranks. Every soldier believes or ought to believe in his 
own regiment, and my comrades of other regiments will, I am 
sure, excuse the alFectionate pride I feel in what we used to call 
"the old 15th." They will agree with me that its name and 
fame did no dishonor to the heart of the Commonwealth, which 
sent it forth as an offering upon the altar of our country. When 
a State has been so nobly represented by all her troops as 
Massachusetts, it is enough to claim that it holds an equal place 
with any. Tried too by the most terrible test I may be entitled 
to remember, of the regiments embraced in the Adjutant- 
General's Reports of Massachusetts, which have separately 
returned their lists of killed and wounded so that the loss by 
battle may be accurately known, the 15th Massachusetts has 
one of the longest and bloodiest lists. 

But, fellow citizens, we rear this monument, not only to these 
and your other brave townsmen whose names it bears upon its 
granite sides, neai-er and dearer perhaps than any others, we 
rear it also to all the brave, however widely scattered they lie, 
who have fallen in the cause of country. Rest then, my 



41 

comrades, where'er " on fame's eternal camping ground your 
silent tents are spread;" rest in peace, your labors have not 
been in vain, you have not died in vain, the cause for which you 
yielded up your lives shall live and triumph. Memorials like 
this shall attest our grateful appreciation of your noble self- 
sacrifice. They cannot be spread too widely, although they 
stand in every village Avhich was once your home ; they cannot 
be reared too loftily, though they "rise to meet the sun in his 
coming," but a nobler monument than these shall yet be reared 
to you, when through the wide domain of the eleven mighty 
States which were the scene of this gigantic rebellion, manhood 
shall be honored and labor shall be rewarded, whether the 
laborer bear the swarthy hue of Africa or the lighter tint of our 
own Saxon race, and when jjcace and order, liberty and law 
shall maintain unchallenged their firm and rightful, yet gentle 
sway. 



REPORT 



SERVICES OF DEDICATION. 



Before giving a report of the services of dedication, a brief 
acconnt of the monument enterprise may not be miinteresting 
to the people of North Brookfiekl and vicinity. Very soon 
after the close of the war a committee was chosen by the town, 
of which Dr. J. Porter was chairman, to report upon the 
feasibility of the project and present i)lans of a monument, who 
attended to the matter promptly, and reported favorably upon 
a design of a plain granite shaft, and asked for an apjjropriation 
of $2,500 to carry the same into effect. After considerable 
debate in town meeting, the burden of which was the great debt 
of the town, together with the hope expressed by some of the 
citizens that a Memorial Hall might be erected, the matter was 
indefinitely postponed. 

Nothing more was said of the matter, except among returned 
soldiers, until the first "decoration day" in the summer of 1868, 
when new interest seemed to be awakened both among soldiers 
and citizens, and action was soon after taken to place tablets to 
the memory of deceased soldiers upon the Avails of the town 
hall. To further this plan a fair was gotten \ip by returned 
soldiers, Avhich was so generously patronized by the citizens that 
$500 Avas placed at the disposal of the monument committee. 



43 

after (lefrayino- the expense of the tablets. Previous to this 
time a committee, consisting of Cliarles Adams, Jr., K/,ra Bntch- 
eller, Dr. Warren Tyler, Wm. H. ]\[()ntague, E. J. linssell, T. 
M. Duncan and John Q. Adams, were chosen to present plans 
for a monument, who unanimously rejiorted in favor of the 
statue of a private soldier after a model by INIartiii ^lillmore, 
the well known artist of Boston, but the question of exjjense 
seemed almost insurmountable, owing to the heavy debt of the 
town. Xotwithstanding, the report of the committee was 
accepted and an a]i|)ro|)riation of §3,000 was maile with 
remarkable unanimity ; the balance of the cost beside the 8500 
contributed from the soldiers' fair, was made up by private 
subscri|)tions, mainly by the firm who have given a name and 
character for enterprise to the town of Xorth Brookfield. It 
was the design of the committee to have had the monument 
completed so as to be dedicated on the 17th of September, the 
anniversary of the battle of Antietam, the day when three of 
the men whose names ai)])ear upon its base went down under 
the fire of that terrible day ; but delays were occasioned oxev 
which the artist had no control, and it was not finally completed 
\intil December, 18G9. As matters historical and biographical 
are so i)erfectly set forth in the oration, the committee cannot 
better describe the services of dedication than liy giving extracts 
from newspapers published at that time. 

[F)-om the Worcester Dailij Spy.] 

According to the announcement made several weeks since, 
the monument raised to commemorate the honored dead of 
North Brookfield who fell in the war of the rebellion, was 
dedicated yesterday by impressive and appropriate ceremonies, 

Tlie day was a clear, cold and bright one, pleasant as a winter 
day could possibly be, with the exception of the rough conditioii 
of the ground. The town of North Brookfield was filled at an 
early hour in the day by dignitaries from abroad, membeis of 



44 

the Grand Army from the adjoining towns, and citizens. Many 
of them arrived Tuesday night, and were present at the concert 
given by Hall's band, of Boston, which also furnished the music 
for the dedication exercises. But the express train arriving at 
West Brookfield at eleven o'clock, brought the most distinguished 
portion of the number jDresent, Governor Claflin and a part of 
the council; they were met at the station by carriages and 
conveyed to the scene of the ceremonies, their arrival in the 
village being announced by the firing of a salute of fifteen 
guns, in front of the First Congregational church, in which tlie 
address was made. The executive party were made the guests 
of Hon. Charles Adams, Jr., to whose house they repaired for 
dinner. 

The monument, of which our readers have read accounts from 
time to time, is of New Hampshire granite, of fine grain, and 
light grey in color. It is a statue of a private soldier, standing 
at parade rest, in full uniform, with downcast face, suggestive of 
the whole mournful story connected with the fall of the brave 
ones whose names are chiseled on the tablet beneath. The 
statue is seven feet in height, and stands on a plinth eight feet 
high, on the north side of which is the following inscription : 



ERECTED 

BY THE 

TOWN OF NORTH BROOKFIELD, 

IN HONOR OF HER 

SOLDIERS WHO LOST THEIR LIVES 

IN DEFENCK OF THE 

COUKTRY AGAINST THE REBELLION, 

1861—05. 



The back of the block presents only a plain surface, while 
the remaining sides are inscribed with the names of the dead, 
in the followinor order : 



45 

EAST SIDE. WEST SIDE. 

N. B. Maxwell, James P. Coolidge, 

Peter Devlin, George S. Prouty, 

William Clarke, Lyman IT. (;ill)ert, 

Heiuy R. Bliss, Alviii M. Thompson, 

Joseph C. Fretts, Louis D. Winslow, 

Charles Perry, Andrew J. PMsher, 

John A. Hughes, James A. Knight, 

Henry H". Moulton, Lyman Tucker, 

Wm. F. Hill, Albert F. Potter, 

Charles H. Ashby, Wm. Bates, 

Albert F. Holnian, David S. Moulton, 

Timothy McCarty, John F. Lamb, 

N. S. Dickinson, Tliomas Griflin, 

James Henderson, J. Henry Jenks, 

John Gilmore, Alonzo E. Pellet. 
George L. Sherman. 

The monument also bears the name of the sculptor, " Martin 
Milmore, Boston, 1869." 

The monument committee, chosen when the work was first 
contemplated, were Charles Adams, Jr., Ezra Batcheller, Warren 
Tyler, Wm. H. Montague, E. J. Russell, T. M. Duncan and J. 
Q. Adams, and arrangements were effected by them with 
Martin Milmore of Boston for a monument in granite, like the 
bronze one designed by him for the city of Roxbury, to be 
completed by the first of September, though this time was 
afterwards found to be too short. It was placed in its present 
position at a total cost of $5,500 ; 13,000 of that amount was 
appropriated by the town, 8500 was raised by the Grand Ai-my 
post of the town, and the balance was the generous gift of 
private citizens. 

At one o'clock a battalion fomied in front of the town hall, 
consisting of Grand Army post 51, North Brookfield ; post 38, 
Brookfield ; post 36, Spencer ; post 82, Warren ; post 85, 
Ware ; and a delegation from post 50, Barre, under command 
of Captain David M. Earle of North Brookfield, and in the 
order named marched to the residences of Hon. Charles Adams, 
Jr., and Gen. Francis Walker, headed by Hall's Boston brass 
band, and escorted the governor and council and the orator of 

7 



46 

the day to the First Congregational churcli, which was instantly 
filled on the opening of the doors, hundreds standing outside, 
unable to get admission. 

The monument committee also acted as a committee of 
arrangements, and superintended the day's exercises most effi- 
ciently. On entering the church, the distinguished guests were 
conducted to seats in front of the pulpit, which was occupied by 
the orator. Gen. Francis A, Walker, and Rev. Messrs. Dodge 
and DeBevoise. The band was assigned a place in the center 
of the front gallery. Hon. Charles Adams, Jr., conducted the 
ceremonies, and after music by the band and an invocation from 
Rev. Mr. Dodge, he, on behalf of the committee, consigned the 
future charge of the monument to the selectmen of the town. 

Mr. Adams, spoke as follows : 

Felloio Citizens : By virtue of my position on the committee 
appointed by the town to procure a soldiers' monument, it has 
been made my duty' on this occasion to announce to you the 
accomplishment, substantially, of the service assigned to the 
committee — and the announcement is silently, yet more 
eloquently expressed by the monument itself than it can be by 
any words of mine — to formally present it to you in behalf of 
the committee, and to initiate the ceremonies of its inauguration. 

Few words are exj)ected from me on this occasion, and I shall 
endeavor not to disapi^oint that expectation. Other and distin- 
guished gentlemen are present, I am happy to say, to whom the 
duty of addressing you has been specially assigned, and to 
whom I know we shall all listen with great interest. 

The town committee of which I haA^e the honor to be a 
member, was originally appointed to consider the subject of 
procuring a monument in honor of our deceased soldiers, to 
present designs and report upon their expense. From a 
considerable number of monuments, drawings and designs 
visited and examined by the committee, they unanimously 
selected the monument designed and executed by Mr. Milmore 



47 

of Boston, i'or tlie citizens of Roxbury ; and recommeucled 
it to the town, substituting granite instead of bronze as the 
material for the statue. That recommendation Avas adopted 
by the A^ote of a large majority of the citizens, and the sum of 
l>3,000 voted for tlie inii-])ose, the committee guaranteeing that 
no further call should be made upon the toMn for the necessary 
balance above that amount. The same committee was instructed 
to procure its execution and erection. The result of our labors 
is before you. Now, in behalf of the Avidows and children, the 
fathers and mothers, the brothers and sisters of our fallen 
heroes, Avho contributed not alone their labors, but their lives, 
that we, that the nation, might live; inbehalf of their surviA'ing 
comrades; in behalf of a grateful country; in behalf of all 
posterity, I thank the citizenSof North Brookfield by whose 
patriotic mtmificence, chiefly, this beautiful and appropriate 
monument has been erected. To the sculptor whose absence on 
this occasion I very much regret, Avhose eye sought out among 
the ledges of the Granite State the block which contained the 
statue now before you, whose cunning hand chiseled away the 
flinty shroud and developed to the light of day the beautifully 
life-like and historic form, suggestive of the whole story, even 
without the sorrowful details inscribed upon its base ; to him, 
to Martin Milmore, are our thanks especially due and most 
sincerely accoi'ded. 

It is recorded in the sacred scriptures that the Israelites Avere 
directed, Avhen their children in time to come should inquire in 
relation to the monument erected at Gilgal, from the stoned 
taken from the bed of the river Jordan, " Avhat mean these 
stones ? " to ansAver, saying, " Israel came over this Jordan on 
dry land, for the Lord your God dried up the Avaters of Jordan 
from before you until ye Avere passed over, as the Lord your 
God did to the Red Sea, Avhich he dried u]) before us until Ave 
Avere gone over." So, felloAV citizens, Avhen in time to come you 
shall lead your children to this sacred memorial, and they shall 
ask "what mean these stones?" vou can ansAver them, saying. 



48 

'^-f\ - 
"through a wilderness of two hundred years of slavery Bi©¥e' 

than Egyptian ; through the Jordan of a most wicked rebellion, 

with its red sea of blood, whose waves were crimsomed from the 

veins of the soldiers here commemorated, did the Lord your God 

lead your fathers, drying it up before them until they Avere gone 

over, and their feet firmly jilanted on the shores of the promised 

land of liberty and peace." And I know of no more fitting 

corollary than that pronoxuiced by Joshua on the occasion 

alluded to above, " That all the people of the earth may know 

the hand of the Lord, that it is mighty, that ye might fear the 

Lord your God forever." 

And now to the constituted fiithers and guardians of the 

town, the conservators alike of its morals and of its material 

interests ; to you, Mr. Chairman, and to your colleagues, and to 

your successors in ofiice, is the care and custody of this beautiful 

and sacred memento intrusted forever. Please accept the trust 

now relinquished by the Committee. 

It was accepted by Dr. Warren Tyler, Chairman of the 
Board of Selectmen, in the following brief speech: 

Mr. Chairman : It is with much pleasure that I, in behalf of 
the citizens of North Brookfield, accept this token of respect 
for our fallen soldiers, and gratitude for those who lost their 
lives in the cause of human liberty and that the rejaublic might 
live, and trust that the guardians who are to come after us, 
together with the 1 )eautiful exjjression of sympathy and j)ity the 
granite is made to speak, will protect it from all harm ; so that 
it may tell to generations in the far distant future that we loved 
liberty and honored the true soldier. 

Gen. Walker was then introduced, and proceeded in a most 
eloquent manner to address the large audience, tlie strict silence 
showing the eagerness of those assembled to listen to their 
townsman who had come from Washington to address them on 
this occasion. The oration was listened to with the profound 
attention worthy the effort of the orator. 



49 

Following the oration, there was nnisic bv the band, after 
which Rev. Mr. DeBevoise made the dedicatory prayer. 

His Excellency Gov. Claflin was introduced at this point, and 
was warmly welcomed by applause as he rose to address the 
audience. 

REMARKS OF HIS EXCELLENCY GOV. f LAFLIX. 

Fellow Citizens : I fully concur in the words (jf the orator, 
that this is essentially a soldiers' day, and that those who are not 
military men, or who were not in the war have no business here, 
except, indeed, it be to testify their deep sympathy with the 
sufferers, and to show their remembrance of the promises made 
to the brave men who have passed away. At the commence- 
ment of the war these men were promised that they should be 
remembered while absent, and that, if they fell and it were 
possible, they should be brought back to their homes, laid by the 
side of loved ones, and kept in remembrance in all future time. 
So far as they have been kept in remembrance by assemblages 
like these, and so for as our gratitude has been shown by the 
erection of monuments, so far have we done our duty. But 
how small is any sacrifice made now, compared to the great and 
glorious sacrifices made by these soldiers. Monuments in other 
countries have been erected by the people or by the authorities, 
in commemoration of some great hero or monarch. Xo monu- 
ments to the memory of private soldiers are carved, because the 
wars which slew them were not for the liberties of the people, 
but were waged to suppress liberty and enthral the masses. 
The late war in this country showed the better instincts of the 
people. It was imdertaken by the oligarcliy of the South for 
the preservation of the vilest system of slavery tlie sun ever 
shone \ipon. The oligarchy failed and the slave is now free. In 
the future, when the widows made by that war shall ]H)int their 
children to the name of their fathers ujion this monument, it 
may be some recompense to them to feel that their parent died 
not in vain. We know that nothing we can do will compensate 



50 

those noble men who went to war, for the sacrifices they made. 
The descendants of these fallen heroes may gather about this 
monument and feel honored in having them for their ancestors. 
In the future men will look with wonderment on the nobleness 
of the men of that grand army, who having fought side by side 
and accomplished the Avork given them to do, returned quietly 
to their homes, resuming the ordinary avocations of life, and 
never asking assistance except in direst need. They fought for 
the liberties and safety of the nation, and when the great task 
was accomplished they passed to enjoy the fruits of their 
victory. Let us ever keej) in remembrance the noble men who 
died ; let us gather as often as may be around their monument, 
and lifting up our hearts to God, thank Him for having given 
them such a victory. 

The governor's speech was followed by a most eloquent one 
from Gen. Devens, published elsewhere. A benediction by Eev. 
Mr. Bent, and the doxology by the audience accompanied by 
the band, closed the afternoon services, and the members of the 
Grand Army repaired to Union liall, where a bountiful collation 
had been provided by the ladies. 

A committee, consisting of Messrs. E. J. Russell, T. M. 
Duncan, Wm. H. Montague and Hon. Charles Adams, Jr., were 
appointed and autliorized to print the oration, together with 
such account of the ])roceedings as they should deem jarojier. 

In the evening the multitude, or such part of it as could gain 
entrance, assembled in the town hall, where speeches w^ere made, 
music discoursed, and the governor was subjected to nearly an 
hour of vigorous hand-shaking, after which, his excellency Gov. 
Claflin, accompanied by Judge Devens and those members of 
the council who were present, was conveyed to the station at 
West Brookfield, and returned to Boston. 

The entire arrangements reflect the greatest of credit on the 
committee, who failed in no detail to furnish accommodations 
for guests, and see well to it that nothing was lacking to render 
all present comfortable and well provided for. 



JUN 13 1907 



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